A Little Bit of Blogress

Now, well past the 6 year blogging mark (my 7th free blog spot) and given the current pandemic situation, I thought it was time to take stock of where I am in this whole blogging gig. Three occurrences over the past little while caused me to reevaluate if I have, in fact, made any real progress.

1. When nominated for the 10 Day photo challenge, I looked back through my old photos (some were part of previous blog posts/others were not) for ideas, and thought, I have so many other interesting posts I could make, rather than just detailing short dreary walks around my small City. Not that these dreary walk posts will disappear immediately, as I still have quite a few in the hopper.
2. As my muse and proofreader Patty read my 10 day challenge photo posts, she suggested “Why don’t you go back to some of our previous trips and post about them. People are probably starving to see travel posts these days”. I thought, who wants to read posts about old trips? But, then, a lightbulb went on and I reconsidered.
3. Reading another blogger’s post about how he assesses if the blogger he is reading is good, another lightbulb went on. He said that when he started reading or following another blogger, he always looked back at their early posts to see how their style and skills progressed. Hmmmm.

With all this in mind, I went right back to the beginning. No, not the moment of my birth, the beginning of my blogging history. As regular readers know, my first blog spot was set up in November 2014, to keep friends and relatives up to date on our adventures during our 7 1/2 week retirement trip to New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver. It was a Private site, so likes and comments were not the main focus here. In fact, there were very few of those. But, it worked, kinda.

I popped open a few of those posts and started reading. Holy Crap, at the beginning, it was like I was making a shopping list…we did…we drove…we ate…we stayed. How excitingzzzzzzz! Good thing it was private. Next, I noticed was that each post only had 3-5 photos. They kinda told a story, but not quite. Then, I remembered why my posts were this way. I was blogging daily during the trip and was having way too much fun to spend a lot of time writing posts. By the end of that trip, despite time pressures, my writing style had evolved, in a good way.

The differences between these first posts and the ones on my current site were monumental: writing style (including poetry), posts were now built around my photos and all posts (except time specific ones) are time shifted, so I can enjoy any vacay that comes my way.

For a few days, I puzzled over what to do to break the current posting monotony and then thought, if I am going to post about a historical trip, why not start with that very trip.

To make it easier, I cut and pasted the old posts, complete with original titles into my new blog spot, reviewed my litany of photos and then reworked prose and photos to make it less like a shopping list. I am not yet through the whole project, but it has been a lot of fun and fond remembrance in the process. The jury on my success or failure is out until my readers see these posts. I am not ready to start posting them yet, but, just thought I’d let you know what was spinning in my rather cluttered brain.

Thanks to all my readers for putting up with my ramblings.